


Rinse and Repeat

by FarenMaddox



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: M/M, Series Spoilers, Shower Sex, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FarenMaddox/pseuds/FarenMaddox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> It appears I ship Luvander and Balfour for some reason I haven't yet identified, and it appears I like them best when they're soaking wet.  This is not a story, this is shower smut with a side of angst.  I mean, it's Balfour, the angst is implied.  So.  Yep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rinse and Repeat

The thing about spending time with Luvander was that it was often hard to draw a line from Point A to Point B.  Point A, in this case, being sitting in the back room of the hat shop telling him how things were progressing on the Greylace estate, and Point B being where Balfour was now, which was once again in the back of Luvander’s hat shop but now half-drunk and smelling overpoweringly of clove cigarettes and terrible cologne.  Balfour did not understand how Luvander had convinced him to go out to a bar.  He only had agreed because it was a place he’d never been before.  He wouldn’t have had the stomach to go to one of their old haunts, where the ghosts of the others still lingered in corners and he could still hear whisps of their laughter near the billiard tables.

The bar had been . . . interesting, to say the least.  Now that Luvander had his own business and his own life, he didn’t bother to cover up who he was, and the bar he’d dragged Balfour to was meant to cater to a very particular clientele.  Balfour had been teased and pinched and ogled by half the patrons of the establishment, but honestly no more so than he’d ever been by the women who hung around the old places and he didn‘t feel any more or less awkward because it was men this time.  There was good wine, the music was lively and different, and Luvander had been in a particularly fine mood for jokes and had kept the conversation going for both of them after Balfour had gotten overwhelmed and retreated to a corner to drink in peace.

Balfour often felt as though there was something wrong with him, when he did that.  He did make a strong effort to enjoy the company of others, but too many of them at once made him feel tired and anxious.  Luvander had seemed to sense when his companion had reached his limit, and had sort of set himself in front of Balfour as a shield.  Finally, they’d called it a night and returned to Luvander’s place.

“I smell,” Balfour said morosely, burying his nose in his own shirt.

Luvander laughed, but clucked his tongue and brushed a stray lock of hair from Balfour’s face.  “You look dead on your feet.  Why don’t you go and have a shower, and you can sleep here tonight?  It’s far too late for you to go back to the estate tonight.”

Groggy from drink and from being awake since dawn, Balfour nodded dumbly.  “I’d appreciate that,” he said.  He’d already told Adamo he might not be returning right away.  Adamo wasn’t exactly his Chief Sergeant anymore, but he did tend to fuss over his ragtag collection of dragon riders, so Balfour generally took pains to keep Adamo abreast of his plans.  _“So is he your mother, or is he your wife?_ ” Raphael had asked, which was stupid because he was still Adamo, Chief Sergeant or not.  Raphael had narrowly escaped death for a second time.

“Well, then, I’ll find you a clean shirt and something to wear to sleep,” Luvander said cheerfully, “and I’ll leave it outside the door for you.  The shower’s just this way.”

Balfour let himself be led to the bathing facilities, and he shut the door, and then groaned softly.  He’d not been very smart, choosing a shirt with so many buttons to wear today.  He ought to be more strategic about these things when he didn’t know what his plans were for the day.  He hadn’t counted on spending so much of his evening carefully focused on the casual shaking of hands and slapping of shoulders in the bar, of holding a wine goblet steady, all done without breaking glass or bone.  His wrists ached fiercely from the strain, and he still had this row of buttons to tackle.

Well, once he got the shirt off, the hot water was sure to help, he reasoned, and set to the task.  He gritted his teeth as the aching grew more fierce, and tried to keep going.  There was a slight hesitation before his fingers whirred in response to his demands.  Each button felt progressively more difficult, until halfway down Balfour was quite ready to simply tear the shirt from his body and declare it ruined.

There was a knock on the door.  “May I?” Luvander called.

“Ah,” Balfour replied, feeling embarrassed and caught out.

Luvander came into the room by degrees, hands and arms first bearing clean towels and clothing, and then his face peering around the door, and then finally the rest of him.  “Did you need help figuring out how to work the shower?” he asked.

Balfour, for a moment, couldn’t get his fingers to let go of his shirt so he could reach out and take the load from Luvander’s hands.  He felt his face flushing red, and he dropped his eyes to the ground.  It twisted in his gut; embarrassment, bittnerness, and resignation a nauseating roil that didn’t mix well with the wine still sloshing about in there.

“I see,” Luvander said, very softly.  Then he shrugged, and said with confidence, “Well, if you don’t mind it too much, I can help you.”  He was already setting his burden down and stepping forward with his fingers reaching for the buttons, but Balfour took a step back.  The roil, and the heat in his cheeks, grew worse.  Luvander’s own face was impassable and his eyes were looking over Balfour’s shoulder when he said, “You don’t have to be so dramatic about it.”  Then he snatched up Balfour’s shirt in his hands and began to make quick work of the rest of the buttons.

Balfour had known for a long time how Luvander looked at him, and he supposed it was entirely his own fault that this moment had to be so awkward.  But really, he’d only been eighteen at the time, how was he supposed to have known the proper way to act?

_Luvander harried Balfour just as nuch as the other Airmen had, he’d freely admit that.   He’d never even considered not being involved.  It was only a natural part of becoming a dragon rider.  You bore it or you didn’t, and Luvander had to do his part to try to break the lad in.  But it got hard.   It broke something in him, instead of Balfour, once Rook had started in with all of his “cindy” this and “woman” that . . . It was never precisely easy to be himself and especially not around Rook, and he hated himself for not being big enough to point out the difference between hazing the new kid and allowing Rook‘s ignorance and hatefulness free rein.  It wasn’t entirely a secret to the other Airmen that Luvander was the cindy, not Balfour, but thankfully no one had seen fit to provide Rook with that information.  It wasn’t that Luvander was afraid of the brute or anything . . . But he didn’t need his life to be any more difficult than it already was._

_So yes, it made him feel sullied and awful when those insults became a part of breaking in the new rider.  Luvander tried to fade into the background, once that happened, but it didn’t entirely make him feel absolved of guilt.  What if Balfour did share Luvander’s predilections, and what if he was even now realizing it had been a mistake to come here, where he was so unwelcomed?  Luvander found his ability to live openly a worthy trade for riding Yesfir, and he could almost convince himself that his girl was the only relationship he really needed . . . but Balfour might not feel the same.  Assuming Balfour was, indeed, interested in men and Rook was not full of horseshit, which did not seem likely._

_The mere possibility was all it really took to spark Luvander’s interest, but he had to blame Balfour himself for the fact that the youth kept Luvander’s interest for so long.  It didn’t help matters that he was beautiful, but it was far more than that.  He was gifted and intelligent and more brave and strong than he’d any right to be.  He was under more pressure than any of them, in some ways, and he never showed a hint of cracking.  He never cried.  He bore it all, the blue face, the piss in his boots, the missing items and the cruel words and the scrutiny of a nation waiting to see if he could live up to his brother’s name.  He never once showed any of what Luvander assumed must be a torrent of doubts and fears raging inside him.  He spoke softly when he spoke at all, stayed out of the way, and then bonded with Anastasia so ferociously and settled into his scouting role so skillfully that they mostly had to shut up._

_Luvander had never known someone so incredibly strong.  The airmen were a tough bunch, to be sure.  But to stand up to all of it and to never even change himself, to wait until they acknowledged his skill and to go on being the same quiet, bookish boy and not let them take that away from him . . . Luvander blamed Balfour entirely for the fact that he fell head over heels for him._

_It escaped no one’s notice that Balfour was a lovely youth, least of all Luvander.  He had dark hair, pale skin, a slender body that was still deciding what it wanted to be when it grew up.  He looked like some child of the moon, a fanciful and stupid thought that Luvander blamed on all the poetry Raphael was always reading in the common areas.  His skin wasn’t the strange whiteness of Ivory’s, but only the creamy paleness of someone whose only time spent outdoors was at night.  His hair was dark and sleek, and his eyes were a blue-tinged grey that was half a colour and half a shade of moonlight.  It was endlessly fascinating to Luvander to think of how it would look, the two of them together, with his own golden skin and lazy tumble of hair and eyes the blue of a summer sky.  One summer, one winter.  One sunlight and one starlight.  They’d look like some kind of metaphor in a painting.  They’d look fantastic._

_It had been nothing but a fantasy, something to jerk off to in the early lazy afternoon just after rising for the day.  Then there was that night in the showers, when the fantasy had been irretrievably ruined._

_They’d stumbled in after a raid one night, covered in soot and exhausted beyond reason.  Luvander had gone straight to the showers and cleaned himself up as quickly as he could.  Half the Airmen were down with a particularly vicious strain of the flu, and the riding was up to those as were fit to crawl onto their dragons.  Luvander was weary to his bones, but too alive and still hot with the fight.  Screams still rang in his ears, Yesfir’s sweet voice still in his mind, the flashes of fire still swam over his vision, and he felt as though he needed to purge it all before his weary body could rest.  His nerves skittered under his skin, and he didn’t know if he wanted to start a fight or hire a whore or just jump out a window and see what happened._

_He’d looked across and seen Balfour, and felt his breath catch in his chest and his pulse stutter.  Balfour had turned his face up to the spray of water, rinsing away the grime on his face.  Water trickled over those high cheekbones and pale lips.  His hair was black in the water.  His skin was clear and unblemished but for the swirls of gray ash that traced the contours and hollows of a lean frame that was almost too thin.  Luvander could see his ribs, his sharp clavicles, and_ Bastion fuck _, the jut of his hipbones as he leaned back.  Water streamed over the hollow in his throat, and Luvander felt his own throat tighten._

_Balfour turned blindly to reach for the soap, and was so weary that he swayed on his feet and nearly fell.  He caught himself with one hand, and Luvander could not exactly say how it was that he made it across to Balfour and steadied him so quickly.  But once he was there, he found it very, very hard to let go._

Balfour remembered it all too clearly, every detail still fresh as he watched Luvander unbutton his shirt for him.  He remembered his mind swimming with exhaustion and the heat and steam of the hot water, the careful grip of Luvander’s hands on his arms to keep him from falling.  The way Luvander’s bright blue eyes had heated and become sharp.  The way Balfour had swallowed—and swallowed again, unable to marshall a single word to help him.

Luvander had kissed him, then.  Pressed him up against the wall and put a hand on his neck to tilt his head, and kissed him.  Heavy, languid, slow.  Balfour had drawn a harsh breath, fallen back against the slick tiled wall.  The kiss went on.  Balfour’s hand rose up and brushed over Luvander’s shoulder. His fingers had been stiff with shock and uncertainty, but he’d laid them on Luvander’s beautiful warm skin and threw his head back to get more of that touch on his neck.  He shouldn’t.  He knew better.  But even in his exhaustion, his blood was pounding, and Luvander’s lips had traced his jaw and set fire to him as if tracing a familiar pathway he already knew.

Balfour had been afraid.  Luvander wasn’t as bad as some of the others, but it wasn’t as though Luvander had never hurt him.  He’d almost been glad of the illness that had beset most of the men, despite all the extra work for him, because that was the first time he’d slept easily since his arrival.  Luvander was beautiful, but Balfour was afraid.

He’d used his hand on Luvander’s shoulder to push him away.  Luvander seemed to sense it only dimly.  Balfour pushed harder, and Luvander had blinked at the hand on his shoulder with hazy, uncomprehending eyes.  He’d circled his fingers around Balfour’s wrist and lifted his hand, and then . . . Balfour’s stomach dropped and he felt his ability to resist break apart when lust crashed through his belly.  Luvander had sucked Balfour’s fingers into his mouth, rolled his tongue around a knuckle, his eyes locked on Balfour’s and blazing with heat.  Balfour had shuddered, his free hand coming away from the wall to touch Luvander’s hip.

That was when he’d heard a noise.  Could have been Adamo heading to bed, could have been one of the sick airmen running to a toilet to vomit again.  Could have been one of the stable boys making too much noise down on the docks.  Could have been any number of things.

But what Balfour heard was somebody waiting around the corner to discover them.  The fear rose up again, and he’d finally managed to shove Luvander away.  He’d felt sick and scared and something more than that as he’d looked into Luvander’s confused expression.  Was it just a game?  Had he planned this, were Merritt and Magoughin the witnesses waiting for a signal?  Was this something they’d cooked up to prove once and for all that the little lord cindy was exactly what they kept accusing him of being?

All he could think of in that moment was what was his life in the Airman would be like if this was meant as a trap.  He didn’t even see what was in Luvander’s eyes when he shoved him away with a cry and said “What are you playing at?” and grabbed his things and ran from the showers naked and dripping water everywhere.  He never saw the expression the other man wore, of someone who was walking down a familiar set of stairs and suddenly one step had ceased to exist.

He knew he’d made a mistake the next day, and the next, and the day after.  When Luvander started to turn his eyes away to avoid being caught by Balfour’s, when he started to leave the room as Balfour came in, when the pranks the other men played regained a certain vicious edge they’d been lacking recently.  It was only then that Balfour understand that, just for once, it hadn’t been a cruel game or a test of his mettle or some clever way of reminding him he wasn’t Avery.  Just for once.  And he’d hurt someone.  It was the one thing he’d never wanted to do.  He’d wanted it to stop, but he’d never wanted to strike back.  It had weighed on him all this time, even if he’d done it by accident.

And now Luvander was here, somehow one of the few men who still was.  Unbuttoning Balfour’s shirt briskly, trying to act as though they weren’t both thinking of that night and simultaneously trying to act as though what he was doing was not taking pity on poor Balfour with his clumsy metal hands.  It would have been a pretty piece of acting, if only he could have raised his eyes from the ground.  Balfour didn’t like seeing Luvander looking at the ground.  It wasn’t like him.  Luvander had been . . . different.   Since the end of the war.  His laughter was honest and his smiles were round instead of sharp.  His pride in his work was real, and endearing.  He met men in colorful bars and kissed them when he liked and didn’t have to take what Rook would say into account.  He seemed more, well, more _Luvander_ now.  Balfour wondered if it was too late to explain or apologize, but maybe it had to wait until now because it was only now that they could speak as themselves.

“I thought,” Balfour began, hesitantly, softly, “back then, I mean.  I thought it was a trick.  I thought some of the others must have . . .”

Luvander’s shoulders drew tight with tension, and Balfour almost stopped speaking, but he didn’t want this between them anymore so he pressed on.

“How could I have known any better?” he asked, unable to keep some of the old hurt from bleeding into his voice.  “It wasn’t as though anyone had given me . . . Oh, anything . . .” he sighed.  Respect came grudgingly when he proved himself atop Anastasia, but it didn’t stop them from picking on him.  Not until Thom came along and they found a new target.  And he hadn’t been able to save Thom anymore than he’d ever been able to save himself, much to his shame.

“You thought,” Luvander said, then stopped himself.  He had finally looked up, and his eyes were blue like bruises.

Balfour’s metal hands were clenching up, so he carefully pressed them against his thighs to make sure he didn’t accidentally cause any damage.  His wrists were throbbing.  He nodded carefully.  “I didn’t know you truly wanted . . . I understood later, but I didn’t know how to apologize.  Is it . . . May I apologize to you now?”

Luvander laughed lightly and shook his head, the hurt in his eyes fading away a little.  “It’s not necessary,” he said, but his shoulders were beginning to relax again, so Balfour knew that Luvander was lying to at least one of them.  “As you said, you couldn’t have known.  And it was hardly good manners to simply accost you in the showers and set upon you like an animal.  That was . . . I should apologize to you, as well.  It was wrong of me to force myself on you like that.”

Balfour could have done some painfully polite and dishonest thing, and insisted that Luvander’s apology wasn’t necessary either.  Instead, he nodded, because it was the first time someone had apologized to him for any part of it and it made his chest feel tight and aching just to hear the words.

“I’m actually quite popular now,” Luvander said with a wink, “and hardly desperate enough to throw myself at people who aren’t even interested.  You needn’t worry about a repeat of the experience.  There, I’ve done your shirt, can you manage now?”

Balfour could hardly breathe.  In the midst of his relief that they‘d finally made things all right between them, Luvander’s words— _needn’t worry about a repeat_ —had set his pulse to racing.  Did Luvander not remember the way Balfour had fallen back against the wall and gasped for air and offered himself up, for that moment before fear took over?  _Not even interested_?  Balfour had been _quite_ interested.

Well, it wasn’t as though Luvander would be interested now.  As he’d just said, he wasn’t desperate, not like he’d been back then.  Balfour was hardly the best he could do, not with these whirring and clicking lumps of metal where his hands used to be.  Disabled and introverted and skinny little Balfour?  With Luvander, all made of sunlight and smiles?  It was like the beginning to one of Magoughin’s less funny jokes.

His face was hot, he could feel it.  He gazed into the white porcelain sink and wished with all his heart for Luvander to go away now.

“Balfour?”

“I’m fine,” he murmured.  “I can manage.  Th-thank you.”

“You aren’t about to be ill, are you?  Did you have too much wine?  Should I put on some coffee?”

“No, thank you.  I doubt coffee would stop me from wishing the experience would repeat itself.”

Balfour’s own eyes widened with shock right along with Luvander.  He could not believe he’d said that aloud.  He simply could not believe this moment, in which Luvander gaped at him and the silence was so loud as to be deafening, was a real moment.  He’d actually said that, hadn’t he?

“Shit,” he whispered, and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling and will his face to stop burning.  His arms were trembling because he was trying to keep his hands still.  He ached from wrist to elbow, and there was a swooping feeling in his gut and he could feel each heartbeat far more distinctly than he really wanted to.

“So you are, in fact, interested,” Luvander said slowly.

Well, he’d already stepped in it.  He might as well.  So he blew out a breath and said, “Yes, I always was.”

Really, silence should not have substance and weight and heft like this.  It was not natural.

“But as you said, you’re not desperate,” he added, his eyes tracing a crack in the paint on the ceiling with studious determination.

“Oh, I rather think I am,” Luvander said in a strange voice.

Balfour finally looked at him, and saw that his eyes had blazed up bright and fierce.

“I have been more than half in love with you for a long, long time, you see,” Luvander said, sounding for all the world like they were discussing an interesting point of philosophy.  “You _do_ know what a gorgeous creature you are, I assume.”

“I— g-gorgeous?  Me?  But—no.  I’m not,” he said firmly.  He had only been average at best, and now . . . He looked down at his hands.  He’d taken the gloves off, and they gleamed dully in the light.

“Oh,” Luvander said softly, looking at them too.  “You don’t really think—oh, of course you do,” he said more quickly, almost annoyed.  “You think so little of yourself all the time anyway, of _course_ you’d think you were suddenly unattractive just because of your hands.”

Balfour bit back his reply, because he didn’t want to create a new hurt they couldn’t talk about with Luvander so soon after trying to resolve the old one.

“If it’s a repeat of the experience you were looking for,” Luvander said, and Balfour’s stomach swooped again.  “Then I think we can come fairly close.”  He reached behind himself and turned on the shower.  Then he grabbed Balfour’s wrist, and raised his heavy metal hand up, and—

“Oh, please don’t,” Balfour whispered, but Luvander did.

_Luvander ran his tongue over the steel finger he’d sucked into his mouth, and tried to focus on doing a proper job of this, so that Balfour wouldn’t see the ridiculous flood of tenderness coursing through him.  It was astonishing that a man so lovely and so strong as this one didn’t even know he was, but it seemed he didn’t.  It seemed he just went on living through hurt and fear and loneliness just as much as he ever had.  And he seemed to think his own hands were ugly, too.  Luvander wasn’t going to let him, he decided.  He pressed careful kisses to the back of the mechanical hand, and sucked in one of his fingers, and watched Balfour’s eyes squeeze shut as if he couldn’t bear to watch._

_“Come,” he murmured into Balfour’s polished palm.  “If we’re planning to finish what we started back then, we are wearing far too many clothes.”_

_Balfour sucked in a breath, and Luvander grinned.  He let go of Balfour’s hand, but only so he could strip off Balfour’s shirt._

_Balfour lifted his arm, touched the collar of Luvander’s shirt, then turned his face away in shame.  “I’m afraid I . . .”_

_Luvander had forgotten, but now he remembered Adamo telling him that Balfour tended to lose control of his hands only after days of using them too much, and only when he was in excessive pain.  He didn’t want Balfour to see anything like pity in his eyes, so he closed them for a moment.  When he opened them again, he was determined.  He would get Balfour into this shower, he would caress every inch of Balfour’s body, and then he would let the man rest until morning._

_“It’ll be your job to do the undressing of us next time,” Luvander murmured as he made quick work of his own clothes.  He had his own scars, and he was watching Balfour so he could see the moment the other man remembered, when Luvander pulled the scarf away and dropped it carelessly to the floor.  He wasn’t bothered by it, nor by staring.  He’d gotten it in battle and was therefore proud of it, and he’d been reassured more than once that there was something rather alluring about the twisting shape it made around his neck.  It wasn’t until he reached for Balfour’s pants that the sentence he’d spoken finally seemed to catch up to the dark-haired man._

_“Next time?”_

_“Assuming all goes well this time,” Luvander said without concern, “then yes, I should like to think there will be many, many next times.  I did say I was more than half in love with you.”_

_Balfour’s fucking face, really, Luvander thought, not without fondness.  He always looked so fragile and heartbreaking, and it was not very fair considering he really was made of steel all the way through.  It was so terribly manipulative of him to always look as though he would fly apart at any second._

_Then he pushed Balfour under the spray of the water, and any thoughts of tenderness were quickly consumed by the red rush of heat in his veins.  The moment Balfour’s hair darkened with water and droplets fell from his eyelashes onto his cheeks, Luvander was_ gone _._

Balfour took in a soft, choking breath when Luvander’s lips claimed the hollow of his throat.  His back hit the wall and slid along its wet surface.  The warm water was already relaxing the tension in his muscles, and already the pain was lessening.  He was dizzy.  He leaned into the wall as hard as he could to keep himself upright.  Luvander’s full, pink lips were sucking and dragging along his neck, then falling over Balfour’s own lips.  Balfour opened his mouth with hunger to take in as much of Luvander as he could that way.  Luvander’s hands were tracing slick pathways up his sides, fingering at his always-too-prominent ribs.  Balfour wanted to touch that sun-golden skin, but he was afraid of losing control and hurting him.  His hands were held away, clenching and unclenching with each gasp for air he made.  He didn’t have to worry about the water.  As long as he dried them carefully, there would be no harm.

Luvander suddenly captured him by the wrists and pinned them up over his head.  It hurt, but Balfour made no protest at all.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Luvander said, a wicked light in his eyes, “but I’d rather keep an eye on these until you’re not so tired.”  Then he fell to kissing him again.  He only needed one hand to keep Balfour’s locked against the tiles, since Balfour was putting up no fight against it.  His other hand dipped low and cupped Balfour’s balls.  Balfour groaned, unable to help the noise, and instead of flushing in embarrassment, he rolled his hips forward in a silent plea.  Luvander’s massaging hand was sure and steady and careful.  He groaned again.

And then Luvander reached out of the shower, fumbled with some glass bottles on the sink, and drew one of them in.  He dumped something over his hand, both of them gazing down at the shiny liquid pattering off his fingers and mixing with the water flowing into the drain, and then Luvander took hold of Balfour’s cock and stroked experimentally.

“Ah,” Balfour whimpered.  “Lu-luvander.”

“Mmmnnn,” Luvander moaned.  “I like the way you say that,” he said throatily.

“Lu-van-der.”  Each syllable was a separate gasp as Luvander stroked him.  Luvander seemed greedy for it, the arrogant shit, Balfour thought distantly, leaving Balfour’s mouth free to moan his name and concentrating the attention of his lips on Balfour’s clavicle instead.

“Luvander, I— _oh_ , please, oh—”

All the blood in his body was rushing downward, his arms were pinned to the wall, water was trickling hot through his hair and over his chest, lips were suckling at the tender skin of his neck, Luvander’s _hand_ —

When Balfour came, he also collapsed, so dizzy that his knees gave out.  Cum splattered messily onto the floor and onto Luvander, but was mostly ignored. Luvander was grabbing hold of him and pulling Balfour against his body to keep him from actually falling, and he was laughing as he did it.  Balfour could barely focus his eyes, but he saw the smug look on Luvander’s face.  He couldn’t find it in himself to get upset about it.  All he could do was drape himself onto the sturdier man and rub his nose almost petulantly against the hint of stubble on Luvander’s jaw.

“What do you think?  Shall there be a next time after all?” Luvander asked teasingly.

“Unh,” Balfour answered.  He really was such a child about some things, he realized, although it came slowly because thinking at all required chasing his thoughts across a great distance.  Luvander didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed to find Balfour’s face nuzzling into _his_ scar.

“If you could see fit to find your legs, I believe we should both make some kind of effort at soap before we get out of the shower.”

“Mmm,” Balfour agreed, still rubbing his cheek dreamily into the fine brown stubble on Luvander’s chin.  He was trying to focus on the sensation to get his wits back.  It was not working as fast as he’d hoped.

“For such a thin man, you are frightfully heavy, do you know?” Luvander puffed.

“Hmmm.”

That was when Luvander managed to use his elbow to turn the water over to cold.  Balfour did, in fact, have the capacity to be very noisy when he wanted, and the shriek he issued when cold water struck him in the back very nearly shattered all the bottles Luvander had lined up on the sink.

Luvander very quickly put the water back on hot, but he didn’t stop wearing that smug look of triumph the whole time they were lathering each other up and getting clean.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that Balfour’s dazed state did not allow for much self-consciousness, and he was actually running soapy hands over Luvander’s skin.  Luvander’s delighted noise when he discovered the grouping of little moles between Balfour’s shoulder blades made him sound like a boy who’d gotten the present he wanted for his birthday.  The rest of the shower took rather longer than necessary.  They kept stopping to kiss each other.

Drying off took a long time, too.

Balfour was quite literally falling asleep on his feet by the time Luvander led him down the hallway in his borrowed clothes and tucked him into bed, and he leaned heavily against him.

“Are you _quite_ certain you must return to the estate in the morning?” Luvander asked hopefully.

“Mmph,” Balfour grunted, burying his face in the pillow and not even possessing the energy to feel excited or anxious that it smelled of Luvander and he was about to sleep in Luvander’s bed.  “M’girl gets upset if I’m away too long.”

It must have been like taking an arrow in the chest, hearing Balfour talk about Steelhands, but Luvander only smiled and said, “Well, it seems I shall have to start venturing out of town more frequently then.”

Balfour dredged up just enough strength to move himself over in bed to make room for Luvander, who was standing beside the bed as though he wasn’t even planning to get in it.

“C’mon,” Balfour muttered.  “Lie down so we can sleep.”

“Ah— are you certain?  I can sleep on the—”

Balfour got him by the wrist and dragged him down, Luvander yelping in surprise but managing to turn it into a graceful sprawl as he landed on the bed.

“You just got me off in the shower,” Balfour said, tongue feeling thick as his brain.  “Can share a bed.”

“You make a fair point,” Luvander chuckled.

If Balfour hadn’t been so utterly exhausted, he might have been embarrassed or uncertain about this.  But he was crawling around the bed like a blind newborn kitten, too exhausted to even open his eyes.  He nestled himself against Luvander in a close approximation of the position he’d taken when he all but fainted in the shower, and nuzzled his face back into Luvander’s unshaven neck and jaw.  He loved the light scrape of it.  He didn’t know what to do with his hands, but Luvander solved that for him by turning Balfour over gently and spooning up behind him.

“There now, sleep,” Luvander said fondly.

“Mmm,” Balfour agreed.

He thought he heard Luvander mutter something, his voice full of satisfaction, about summer and winter.  He wanted to ask what Luvander was saying.  But he was already obeying the command to sleep, and he’d forgotten it by morning.

 

 

 


End file.
